Five free Dropbox tools you’re not using (but should be) – Dropbox is handy, but you can make it even easier to use with a wide range of products and services that work hand in hand with the cloud-based storage, syncing, and sharing service. Check out these five favorites for getting even more bang for your Dropbox buck.

How Your Facebook Friends Might Get You Denied a Loan – Going to be buying a new car soon? Thinking about buying a house? Then you may want to be careful who you associate with online: Companies are starting to look at your social media history as part of the decision to offer you a loan.

How to see what your Facebook profile looks like to others – If you’ve adjusted your Facebook privacy settings to something other than their defaults or use lists to organize your social circles, it’s generally a good thing to know how your profile page appears to others. After all, you might not want the entire world to know of your woe-filled past relationships. Luckily for you, it’s easy to do and it only takes a few steps.

All your passwords belong to us – Password hacks and new cracker tools surfaced this week to reinforce passwords are indeed sitting ducks. Will anything be done about it?

Windows 8.1 RTM leaks to Internet – Windows 8.1’s RTM, which Microsoft announced only on Tuesday, has already leaked to file-sharing sites online. The leaked builds of Windows 8.1 RTM may have originated in China — home of most of the companies that build the world’s personal computers and tablets — because a Chinese-language edition was the first to appear. Within a short time, however, English editions of the RTM also popped up on file-sharing websites.

Recover lost or stolen devices – Technology is increasingly the target of crimes, but it can also be used to fight back against the perpetrators. There’s plenty you can do before, during, and after you lose a Web-connected device to increase the chances the gizmo will find its way back to you.

Security:

Homeland Security Worried About Android Security – A report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shows that the government is becoming increasingly concerned about Android security threats. If the feds are grappling with how to keep Android phones secure, maybe they should just ask us for advice.

Sysadmin security fail: NSA finds Snowden hijacked officials’ logins – The National Security Agency (NSA) is the font of information security wisdom for the US defense and intelligence communities. But apparently, the NSA’s own network security is so weak that a single administrator was able to hijack the credentials of a number of NSA employees with high-level security clearances and use them to download data from the agency’s internal networks. That administrator was Edward Snowden.

New York Times site hack shifts attention to registry locks – A registry lock is basically a mechanism under which any requests for changes to a domain name server have to be manually verified and authenticated by a top-level domain owner like Verisign and NeuStar, which operate the dotcom and dotbiz domains respectively.

Confidential data is leaving on workers’ mobile devices – If you think your BYOD policy telling employees that they can’t put sensitive data on their personal smartphones, laptops and tablets is keeping your company safe, think again. Few office workers are actually aware of their company’s BYOD policy.

Mobile phones, meet uncrackable quantum cryptography – After years of being relegated to optics labs alone, researchers at the University of Bristol say they have developed a way to send quantum cryptographic information to handheld devices from a central server.

Verizon Wireless buyout drive is all about the dollar signs – Vodafone Group, which owns 45 percent of Verizon Wireless, confirmed on Thursday that it is in talks with Verizon Communications to sell its minority stake to the U.S. parent company. Vodafone cautioned that there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to make a deal, but the companies have talked about it before and may be more motivated than ever.

Games and Entertainment:

US Army makes another video game public with Proving Grounds – In the game America’s Army: Proving Grounds, the actual real-deal United States Army has commissioned yet another shooting game for the public. This game is not the first game – and it wont be the last created for the Army to show off what it might be like to be a member of their ranks, and it’s being released in Beta mode to Steam this week. This game is entirely free to download, free to play, and aims to display small unit tactical maneuvers and training “that reflects the current day Army.”

Hands On With The Seven Best Fantasy Football Sites And Apps – With the NFL season just a week away, fans are pouring over stats, trash talking their friends, and gearing up for the real season: fantasy football. Here are the coolest and most useful places to play fantasy football out there—from the household names like ESPN to a small startup that’s doing fantasy exclusively on your phone.

SimCity for Mac issues causing some gamers frustration – With the SimCity launch fiasco that took place earlier this year still in fresh in the mind of gamers, many have plodded ahead and downloaded the newly launched SimCity from Mac. Not too long after the download became available, however, comments and tweets are appearing from users who are experiencing a variety of issues with the game, among them being the inability to download it at all.

Grand Theft Auto V official trailer brings the drama – There’s just something about a railgun in a video aimed at open-sandbox gameplay that gets the juices flowing in the morning. Today the folks at Rockstar Games have released “The Official Trailer” for Grand Theft Auto V – aka GTA 5. This trailer includes insight on each of the three storyline paths of the main characters of the game: Michael, Franklin, and Trevor.

What You Don’t Know About Sunglasses Could Hurt You – Exposing your peepers to the sun could trigger a host of serious health problems, including painful sunburns and cataracts. What’s worse, buying sunglasses can be a complicated, cryptic process (what do those labels mean, anyhow?).

Today’s Free Downloads:

Outlook4Gmail 4.0.1 – Outlook4Gmail is a free must-have Outlook add-in providing easy contacts synchronization of your Outlook and Gmail accounts and address books. This add-in uses the maximum correspondence of Outlook and Gmail contact details: Name, Company, Phones, Emails, Addresses, Dates, Persons, Notes, etc. You define the direction of synchronization/update: you can sync or update either the Outlook or the Gmail address book (one-way synchronization) or choose to update both accounts simultaneously (two-way synchronization).

Wifi Password Revealer 1.0.0.5 – WiFi password revealer is a small freeware utility which will show you all your saved WiFi passwords. If you forgot or lost password to your wireless network – this tool is for you. For Windows XP and 2003 Server users. your passwords will be recovered as 64 HEX digits, and not exact password which you have entered. This is NOT a bug. Windows XP automatically converts them into this form, and it can’t be converted back. But you can still use this HEX digits instead of real password in order to connect to your wirelesss network. Administrator rights are required on your PC in order to decrypt stored passwords.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Snowden Leaks $52 Billion Intelligence Budget, Reveals “Offensive Cyber Operations” – National Security Agency leaker and new Russia resident Edward Snowden has leaked a top-secret $52 billion intelligence budget to the Washington Post. The partially redacted budget reveals the successes and shortcomings of the United States’ sprawling intelligence apparatus, as well as the justifications for top-line budget items.

NSA has super secret hacker collective according to newly revealed Snowden docs – A new batch of government documents pilfered by Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia, were made known by The Washington Post today, one that showed a detailed budget and hinted at encryption decoding efforts by the NSA. A different one, however, had another interesting thing to bring to light: the NSA has a super secret collective of hackers.

French judiciary opens “preliminary investigation” of NSA spying: Two French human rights groups filed a legal complaint last month – The French national prosecutor’s office in Paris has opened a “preliminary investigation” into the National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM surveillance program, French media reported on Wednesday. (Don’t forget, France’s own spy agency, the DGSE, likely engages in similar practices.) The inquiry has been underway for over a month, but it’s only now being publicly disclosed through an anonymous judicial source who talked with the Agence France Presse (Google Translate). The investigation began on July 16 to investigate the “illicit collection of personal data” of French citizens.

One response to “Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – August 30, 2013”

The news used to be reported freely and openly. Now, the real news comes to us leaked. Although we aren’t always sure who did the leaking, and usually don’t even care. Leaked news is what all of us are after.
Maybe if everything wasn’t a secret, leaked news wouldn’t be so infectious.
Whatever happened to the old days when News Agencies reported the news and reporters gathered the news worthy of reporting ?
Keep digging Bill.

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